Women graphic designers around the world got asked to photoshop a model to make her “more attractive,” not realizing their results would be used as part of a project by a UK pharmacy chain called Superdrug. Although the sample size is small, given that Superdrug only approached one designer from 18 different countries, the results show a lot of variation in what “more attractive” might mean.
The exact directive for the designers, according to Superdrug, was that the model should be re-touched so that she would “fit with their culture’s perceptions of beauty and an ideal female form.” Gizmodo notes that the Chinese and Italian designers ended out creating models who looked very thin, whereas the Spanish designer’s take leaned in the opposite direction.